Cloud Computing
A 16-year-old boy in Bulgaria is helping some of MIT's smartest minds to map the human brain -- by playing an online game. And someday, that work might be used to solve the mysteries of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease. He's the top "scorer" in the game, in which participants map connections between retinal neurons to develop a 3-D portrait of a single cell.
While 90 percent of healthcare CIOs view IT innovation as critical to success, the more surprising statistic is that fewer than one-fourth consider their existing infrastructure capable of supporting such technological advancement.
Anand Shroff, CTO of Health Fidelity, explains the most fundamental misconception about cloud computing in regard to data security and privacy. He also addresses how data-driven healthcare can improve care coordination.
Among America's dichotomies: The country is widely-viewed as a leader in IT, yet the healthcare industry is notoriously perceived as lagging others in tech adoption. But is it really? To find out, Healthcare IT News Contributing Editor Tom Sullivan spoke with Medicomp Systems CEO David Lareau, who travels the globe and meets with healthcare customers in other nations.
A raft of technologies including broadband, cloud computing, cheaper storage and mobile devices, among others, is driving the transformation. At the same time, market expectations regarding standards of care are changing, as are younger providers' relationship with health-specific IT.
athenahealth is expanding its stronghold in the physician market with the announcement today that it would acquire San Mateo, Calif.-based Epocrates, a mobile health company known for its point-of-care medical apps for physicians. The acquisition will accelerate athenahealth's vision to build the nation's health information backbone, executives say.
Free the data! Empower the patient! Break down those walls! Collaborate! Innovate!
From hurricanes to hackers, there's plenty that could go wrong when it comes to data security. With so much riding on unfettered and highly secure access to healthcare information of every kind -- from prescription information to scheduling to payroll -- keeping that data ironclad is more important than ever.
With its ease of installment, functional versatility, cost effectiveness and seemingly limitless capacity, cloud computing is taking the healthcare IT landscape by storm.
Erica Rosolen is the young director of the TICSA study center at ISALUD University. To learn more about the group, which is already a major player in healthcare ICTs in the region, EHealth Reporter Latin America interviewed Doctor Rosolen.